Dubai reaches metro pay dispute deal

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Dubai’s Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) has reached an agreement with the Japanese-led consortium building the metro in a long-running row over unpaid bills, its chairman said on Wednesday in the first public acknowledgement of the dispute.

"The agreement is already reached, it is a matter of signing," Mattar al-Tayer told reporters on the sidelines of a press conference. "It will be signed in two to three weeks."

Work on the metro had ground to a halt in recent months amid a standoff between the RTA and the consortium over who should pay for extra costs, which have ballooned due to changes to designs and the addition of new stations and facilities.